Topological Non-Fermi Liquid

TL;DR

This paper explores the properties of a topological non-Fermi liquid in a strongly correlated electron system using holographic duality, revealing unique topological quantization effects and spectral behaviors relevant to topological materials.

Contribution

It introduces a holographic model of topological non-Fermi liquids with topologically quantized effective mass and discrete Fermi momentum patterns, analyzing their low-energy behavior and spectral functions.

Findings

Topologically quantized effective mass at IR fixed point for k=±1

Discrete sparse distribution of Fermi momentum due to topology

Spectral functions influenced by anomalous Hall and chiral magnetic effects

Abstract

In this paper we investigate the $(2+1)$-dimensional topological non-Fermi liquid in strongly correlated electron system, which has a holographic dual description by Einstein gravity in $(3+1)$-dimensional anti-de Sitter (AdS) space-time. In a dyonic Reissner-Nordstrom black hole background, we consider a Dirac fermion coupled to the background $U(1)$ gauge theory and an intrinsic chiral gauge field $b_M$ induced by chiral anomaly. UV retarded Green's function of the charged fermion in the UV boundary from AdS$_4$ gravity is calculated, by imposing in-falling wave condition at the horizon. We also obtain IR correlation function of the charged fermion at the IR boundary arising from the near horizon geometry of the topological black hole with index $k=0,\pm 1$. By using the UV retarded Green's function and IR correlation function, we analyze the low frequency behavior of the topological non-Fermi liquid at zero and finite temperatures, especially the relevant non-Fermi liquid behavior near the quantum critical region. In addition, we find that when $k=\pm 1$, the effective mass of bulk Dirac fermion at IR fixed point is topologically quantized, consequently the Fermi momentum presents a discrete sparse distributed pattern, in contrary to the Ricci flat case with $k=0$. As demonstrated examples, we calculate the spectral functions of topological non-Fermi liquid due to anomalous Hall effect (AHE) ($|\vec{b}|\ne 0, b_0=0$) and chiral magnetic effect (CME) ($|\vec{b}| = 0, b_0\ne 0$), which can be tested in topological materials such as topological insulator and topological metal with strong couplings.